Please move the wiki to gsw. Because in the incubator and on the request site for new languages exist requests for all the other language of the albanian language and the most article in the albanian wikipedia are write in Swiss German. --~~~~

I believe we should take option 1. Unfortunately I do not know exactly how to
do that, but I think that the option 2 requires more effort.

The reason I suggested option 2 is that option 1 will most likely break things (and not just the wiki being moved, but things like account creations and CentralAuth too) while the move is in progress. Also, option 2 allows us to try things out and see if they work, which I think is wise since we've never renamed a wiki before.

I don’t see the people at als.wikipedia having been included in or even informed of this in any way. I have been in contact with the people responsible for assigning ISO language codes, and the codes for Alemannic are likely to be changed at some point in the future anyway. I for one regard it as either negligence or an affront to take such a decision without consulting the people at the project involved in any way whatsoever in advance. Not cool. There are several trained linguists active on the als. project, and I do think we have something to add to this discussion. In summary: I urge you to put this on hold and engage in a discussion with the people at the project.

Thanks for your quick reply, I'm not freaking out quite as much, now that you've said that the move won't take place right away;) But since I wasn't informed and only found out about this by chance, I don't know where to write.

In a nutshell: the classification and codes made by the Ethnologue (which ISO codes are based on) are total nonsense linguistically (basically because much like Wikipedia, many Ethnologue entries are provided by whoever files a request, regardless of qualification). I have filed a request with ISO to change the various codes for Alemannic (gsw, swg, wae, gct) to something more in line with current linguistic consensus. The Ethnologue and ISO will likely follow my suggestions at some point, which could result in a completely new code, or in GSW for all of Alemannic. But until that decision has been made by the Ethnologue, the project should not be moved at all. Otherwise we might just end up having to move it again, which would have a very negative impact on the project in my eyes.

The "als" code stands for Tosk Albanian, not the Albanian language as a whole. The Standard Albanian Wikipedia already has an an edition under "sq". Since there is currently no request for a Tosk Wikipedia, there is no urgent need to move. When someone makes a viable request for Tosk, or when ISO get's their codes for Alemannic straightened out, we can move.

By the way: redirecting from "als" to "sq" as you guys are proposing wouldn't be right; Standard Albanian is based on Tosk, but still contains many Gheg variants (e.g. "katund" alonside "fshat", constructions like "do me thonë" etc), which are in fact becoming more and more numerous as writers from Kosovo are having more and more of a say in what Standard Albanian should be like.

It shouldn't have been used, but it was, back in the early days before there was a language committee or guidelines for this. I don't see why now, years later, the Alemannic community should be punished for that by having the domain moved around multiple times. Please bring some more convincing arguments to the table as to why a grandfather clause shouldn't apply as long as there is no immediate need to open up the "als" domain.

Language committee has asked the Board and staff to find resources for making rename process painless. That should happen during up to the end of this year.

Chances that the JAC [1] would accept code switching are low, as it doesn't do that just for the sake of one internet project. (Note that one LangCom member is JAC member, as well.)

German Swiss Wikimedia projects will get redirect for at least one year for switching.

Anyway, from the point of technical implementation and counting the fact that the present process of renaming projects is painful, as well as that there is no harm to other projects, this can wait.

Language committee will insist on code renaming in this case just after JAC's decision. However, I recommend to the German Swiss community to start preparing as soon as possible, because delay will make just more damage to them -- as they would have to rename more links.

1.The JAC wouldn't switch codes for just one project, but since it follows the classification of the SIL (Ethnologue), it will change the code when the Ethnologue does. This isn't something that will happen overnight though, the change request process with SIL seems to be very slow, and new editions of the Ethnologue are not released very often either.

2.There is no Swiss German Wikipedia community, the language and Wikipedia edition is called Alemannic, of which Swiss German is just one part. That is the reason why I am fighting "gsw" tooth and nail right now. "Gsw" right now does not stand for all Alemannic dialects, and als.wikipedia is NOT exclusively a Swiss German edition!

It is not entirely clear to me what decision has been taken here. For the sake of transparency, it would be nice if there was a clear statement explaining what is going on. In particular, a statement informing the Alemannic community at our central discussion board: http://als.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stammtisch

Indeed, the reason being that no evidence was provided that swg, gsw, wae are treated as a single language in some contexts *sigh*. So now I guess I'm going to start compiling an exhaustive dialectological reference list and file another request, since dialectologists have been treating all these as a single language for something like the past 150 years or however long the field has been around, something that could have been easily verified even online by checking the site of the "Alemannisches Institut" (http://alemann.eva-server.de/cms/website.php?id=deralemannischeraum.htm) or this article by Renate Schrambke, one of the leading dialectologists in the field: http://www.alemannisch.de/unser_sprooch/Gliederung.htm

Not changing the name is wrong. Not changing the code hidden in the HTML is something else.. That is beyond stupid AND it has nothing to do with our communities but everything with the functioning of the Internet.

We will not accept any new language that is not recognised as a language. We use the ISO-639-3 to determine what is a language. This is why our names for websites make sense. Als is NOT Alsatian, it will never be. When SIL says there is no evidence, we can talk to SIL and show them the error of their point. When it takes an official from the WMF to do that, so be it.